For the sixth-straight day, thousands of protesters have rallied in the Albanian capital against a proposed luxury beach development linked to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Environmental groups accuse authorities of lacking transparency and allowing for the destruction of protected biodiversity on the country’s Adriatic Coast.

Subscribe to our channel: http://bit.ly/AJSubscribe
Follow us on X : https://twitter.com/AJEnglish
Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera
Check our website: http://www.aljazeera.com/
Check out our Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/aljazeeraenglish/
Download AJE Mobile App: https://aje.news/AJEMobile

The post Protests grow in Albania against Trump-Kushner-linked resort appeared first on MASSIVE News.

The known fossil record from this time, which falls within the Cambrian period, contains a missing chapter. Palaeontologists refer to it as the “Furongian gap”. And it’s striking because there is an explosion of biodiversity within the fossil record both immediately before and after it.

This decline has been considered evidence for a real biological crisis – one driven by environmental instability, changing ocean chemistry, cooling climates, a lack of oxygen in ancient seas, or a combination of these factors.

Our new study, published in the journal BMC Biology, provides new evidence for an alternative idea. The Furongian may not represent a true collapse in biodiversity, but rather a gap in where scientists have looked and what kinds of rocks have been studied.

It’s a reminder of how incomplete our understanding of Earth’s history remains.

A rare group of fossils

We describe a new 500-million-year-old arthropod from Québec, Canada. Arthropods are animals with exoskeletons – that is, skeletons on the exterior of their bodies.

The fossil belongs to a rare group of early arthropods related to the lineage leading to spiders and scorpions. Importantly, it comes from a geological setting that scientists have not previously recognised as being notable for preserving fossils at this time in Earth’s history.

The fossil itself is named Magnicornaspis garwoodi. The animal belongs to the corcoraniids – an enigmatic group of early arthropods that have broad head shields, segmented bodies, and defensive spines.

Corcoraniids remain exceptionally rare globally. Only a handful of species are known from the Cambrian and Ordovician periods.

Our specimen is unique for its two large forward-projecting spines extending from the head. These exaggerated spines distinguish the species from previously known relatives. They suggest defensive adaptations within the group evolved earlier than previously recognised.

Sitting in a museum drawer for decades

The specimen was originally collected in 1962 during geological mapping near Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière in Québec. It came from mudstones within the Rivière-du-Loup Formation. This formation was deposited in relatively deep marine slope environments during the late Cambrian.

This represents quieter offshore conditions where fine mud settled through the water column. These rocks have received relatively little palaeontological attention, making them ideal for reassessment.

The specimen sat largely overlooked within the collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC for decades. This highlights one of the most important aspects of palaeontology: major discoveries do not always emerge directly from fieldwork.

Museum collections contain enormous quantities of under-studied material collected during geological surveys and expeditions over the past century. Revisiting these collections with modern techniques can fundamentally reshape understanding of ancient ecosystems.

More treasures awaiting discovery

Our discovery adds to a growing body of evidence that challenges the notion of a barren late Cambrian world.

Studies from China and Sweden have documented other well-preserved fossils from about 497–485 million years ago.

Together, these discoveries suggest ecosystems may have remained diverse and ecologically complex during this time.

The new Québec fossil expands this picture geographically. Our specimen demonstrates the ancient Appalachian margin of eastern Laurentia, the ancient continent that included much of present-day North America and Greenland, was a site of excellent fossil preservation.

This broadens the known distribution of soft-bodied fossil preservation during the interval. It also hints that comparable deposits may await discovery elsewhere.

The Furongian gap therefore may not represent a biological collapse at all. Instead, it may partly reflect an “anthropogenic bias” in the fossil record – a distortion introduced by where humans have searched, collected, and studied fossils.

Each newly discovered Furongian exceptional fossil site narrows this supposed gap. They reveal increasingly sophisticated ecosystems thriving during the late Cambrian.

Entire groups of organisms – and possibly even ecosystems – may still await discovery within museum drawers or poorly studied rock formations. The late Cambrian lasted millions of years across vast ancient oceans. Yet only a tiny fraction of its environments have been systematically explored for soft-bodied preservation.

The next major fossil discovery may not come from a newly discovered outcrop in a remote desert. It may already exist, inside a museum cabinet, collected decades ago and waiting for someone to recognise its significance.

The post 500-million-year-old fossil helps fill a strange gap in our record of life on Earth appeared first on MASSIVE News.

Yet it’s one rarely itemised on any balance sheet, because nature’s contribution to business remains genuinely hard to quantify.

And for policymakers – particularly in countries reliant on primary industries, such as New Zealand and Australia – ecological investment and economic productivity shouldn’t be taken as opposing goals.

This suggests investment in ecological restoration and protection can generate economic benefits beyond the environmental sector itself.

We found businesses operating in areas with healthier ecosystems tended to generate higher sales and profits.

This is unsurprising. Healthy soils, clean water, fewer pests and intact native vegetation can support food and fibre production while lowering costs.

Across more than 117,000 observations spanning 2009 to 2022, a 1% increase in natural capital was associated with sales about 0.13% higher and profits about 0.15% higher on average. The relationship remained consistent across multiple measures of biodiversity and ecosystem health.

Measuring nature’s value

Because these policies targeted ecosystems rather than directly subsidising firms, they helped us test whether improvements in nature were linked to changes in business performance.

Nature, it turns out, has been doing more economic work than some have given it credit for.

We also tested whether major environmental policies changed this relationship.

As part of a growing body of global research now trying to put hard numbers on what nature actually contributes to the economy, we looked at New Zealand’s case.

This is despite healthy ecosystems underpinning large parts of the economy, from agriculture and forestry to tourism and food production. As the US economist Herman Daly famously put it, the economy is “a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the reverse”.

We combined measures of sales and employment with biodiversity indicators – including river health, drought risk, land use and invasive species – used as part of international reporting obligations.

When green policy boosts productivity

In these primary industry regions, a 1% increase in natural capital was associated with sales that were additionally higher by 0.71% to 0.81% above the economy-wide average.

These New Zealand insights are important for the growing global effort to better understand the economic value of nature. Globally, the services ecosystems provide to business are estimated to be worth trillions of dollars annually.

Our newly completed research turned up a compelling finding: firms operating in areas with richer biodiversity are measurably more productive.

While new frameworks such as the international Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures are beginning to emerge, hard evidence linking ecological conditions to firm-level productivity has remained limited.

We also drew on the Cobb-Douglas economic model – commonly used to estimate how labour and investment drive economic output – to help get a clearer picture of nature’s economic contribution as a factor of production.

Farms and forestry operations in less intensively developed areas – with lower population density and less infrastructure – showed markedly stronger productivity gains linked to natural capital.

When rivers degrade, pests spread or drought hits crops, nature sends a bill.

We chose New Zealand because it publishes detailed sets of business and environmental data. That allowed us to compare company performance with local ecological conditions across different regions.

Our study suggests biodiversity is not simply an environmental concern. Differences in ecosystem health across regions and industries are associated with measurable differences in business performance.

We found the relationship between healthy ecosystems and business performance became even stronger following both interventions, with the productivity effect associated with 1% more natural capital increasing business performance by a further 0.05%. The effect was strongest in the year immediately afterwards.

An unseen benefit

The benefits were also evident in service industries, construction and retail, although spread more evenly across a broader range of ecological factors.

One major obstacle is data. Businesses rarely disclose their precise operating locations, while detailed ecological information that can be linked to specific firms is scarce in most countries.

The strongest effects appeared in agriculture and forestry, where business outcomes are closely tied to the health of surrounding ecosystems.

We also found a trade-off. Areas with more roads, buildings and commercial activity tended to have lower biodiversity scores but higher sales. In other words, businesses can still grow while degrading nature – but may lose some of the productivity benefits healthy ecosystems provide.

One was New Zealand’s Predator Free 2050 programme. The other was a broader package of reforms introduced from 2017, including freshwater rules, tree-planting incentives, restrictions on offshore oil and gas exploration, limits on single-use plastics and the Zero Carbon Act.

Businesses should view the natural environment as a productive asset every bit as real as machinery or labour, not just background scenery.

The post Nature is good for business – and we now have numbers to show it appeared first on MASSIVE News.